


Star Formation

by inkspot_fox



Series: Striations [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Also murdering pirate slavers, Also there is brief reference to Scourge, Backstory, But only very brief, Childhood Trauma, Gay Male Character, Gen, Gray Jedi, It's very neurotypical-focused, Jedi Critical, Jedi Knight Katsulas, Katsulas is a depressed repressed gay disaster with ptsd, Murderous pirate slavers, Neurodivergent Main Character, Repression, The Jedi order isn't a good environment for a lot of people okay, minor original character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-14 21:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10544696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkspot_fox/pseuds/inkspot_fox
Summary: The man who will someday be the Hero of Tython is only five when he runs away from home, pulled by the inexplicable knowledge that everything waits for him beyond Socorro's gravity well, but too young to realize that he's making a mistake.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **EDIT:** Kat's timeline on Tython has been completely re-worked since I posted this, so this story is currently in need of an update. I've adjusted the timeline such that the Jedi Knight prologue on Tython happens when Kat is 14. Everything makes so, so much more sense in so many ways, and this allows Kat to still have Orgus as his Master, and ensures that they have enough time to actually forge a bond before Orgus dies in the main storyline.
> 
> Snapshots of Jedi Knight Katsulas's life, focusing on the time before he becomes the Hero of Tython. Warnings for violence, though nothing worse than is already in canon.
> 
> Subsequent chapters will focus on the backstories of Emperor's Wrath Ashlan and Darth Occlus.
> 
> Also, I'm aware that Socorro wasn't colonized by this point yet, but I also...don't care.

He is five when he runs away from home, pulled by the inexplicable knowledge that _everything_ waits for him beyond Socorro's gravity well, and pushed by the quiet, aching certainty that he will not be missed if he leaves. It does not occur to him that he is too young to know such things for certain.

He is small and dark and clever, and somehow he knows exactly where to step and where to hide. The smugglers don't even realize he's there when he slips onto their ship. The last glimpse Katsulas has of his homeworld is of Sokor's red glow hemorrhaging over burnt black sand dunes, the wind already swallowing his footprints until nothing remains to mark his passing. Kat wonders how long it will take for his parents to notice that he's missing. One day? Two? A week?

It doesn't matter. They won't look for him, and that's how Kat wants it to be.

Kat tucks himself into a hidden compartment (sharp with the crisp smell of fresh water and soothing with the warm thrum of machinery all around him). He uses his pack as a pillow and curls up on cold metal in the darkness. He falls asleep to the steady rumbling of engines, the oscillating murmur of voices and laughter, and the quick tap of boots rattling the hidden panel above his head. He dreams of alien stars and distant worlds lush with color and life. He does not dwell on the memories of his parents again for many years (and by then it is far, far too late).

They are well into hyperspace when Katsulas is finally discovered. When he sees the age lines of the Captain's face scarring deeper with rage, he is terrified that the whispers in his head have led him not to vivid exoplanets and ancient wonders, but to the acid-green flash of a blaster bolt: a short, meaningless end to a short, meaningless life.

But the Captain does not shoot him. Instead she lifts him bodily by the back of his collar and marches down a maze of corridors, finally tossing him at a startled zabrak who smells strongly of garlic and onions. "You'll earn your passage, boy," she snaps. "Qeno, put him to work." When she leaves, air seems to flood back into the room, and Kat's shoulders sag with shaky relief.

'Qeno' has a Type O bright smile and hair the color of a red giant sun. She looks down at him and smooths his black hair away from his dark face. "You got a name, youngling?" she asks him.

The boy frowns at her with suspicion, and he juts his chin out defiantly as he answers: "Kat."

"You hungry, Kat?"

He nods once.

"Well, give me a hand in the galley and you can have some of whatever we make."

Kat relaxes visibly and hazards the tiniest twitch of a smile.

Qeno studies him for a moment, then adds, "Captain F'ahn isn't a bad sort. Keep your fingers where they belong, stay out of her way, and you'll be fine. What're you running from anyway? You're awfully _young_."

Kat shakes his head. "Not running from. Running _to_."

Qeno arches a hairless brow. "Uh huh. All right, so you're a barvy one." She shrugs and grins crookedly. "Guess you'll fit right in."

And he does. The small human youngling is quiet, intelligent, and hardworking. Some of the crew aren't happy about having a child on board, but the complaints stop dead the first time Kat warns them—his wide grey eyes panic-bright—about a Republic customs ambush a full minute before it actually happens.

Kat isn't sure how he knows these things. He just knows them. All that really matters to him now, at five years old, is that he has a new place to call home.

* * *

He is six when he meets Zovae in a small, hidden settlement on Erysthes. Smiles come easily to Katsulas now. He quickly befriends the old mirialan mechanic who smells comfortingly of metal dust, oil, and ozone. When Kat presses his hand to a cover panel on the engine Zovae is working on, he feels _warmth_ within the cool metal, and his fingertips spark. Kat laughs, delighted. "Teach me!" he begs, looking up at Zovae.

Somehow the laugh lines that deepen around Zovae's smiling mouth and the edges of her warm eyes make her younger, rather than aging her. "Teach you what?"

"Everything! I want to learn it all! All of _this_." Kat presses his remaining hand to the cover panel and splays both sets of fingers.

Zovae laughs again and shakes her head. "That would take a very long time, and you'll be leaving once I get this fixed for your Captain."

Kat frowns briefly as he considers this. Then his expression clears, and there is certainty in his strange grey eyes. "Yeah, but I'll be back. The Captain likes it here. She thinks it's safe, and she wants you to fix it whenever something gets broken."

Zovae blinks, startled. She narrows her violet eyes at Kat, studying him, and then closes them as she sighs. "Stars," she murmurs, so quietly that Kat almost doesn't hear her. "Do they even realize—" She shakes her head. "Of course they do." When she looks down at him again, her gentle smile returns. "All right, little one. Let's see if you can keep up."

He does, much to Zovae's joy. Kat isn't a natural savant—he stumbles and fights with concepts beyond basic complexity—but he's clever, and his enthusiasm, dedication, and small gift of intuition make up for his frustrations.

When Kat does have to leave, he is not gone for long, just as he'd predicted. Over the next four years, Captain F'ahn returns every few months to the quiet, hidden settlement just to lie low, make repairs, and share gossip. It's safe, comfortable, and the colonists always have a good supply of chak-root to trade with. It doesn't hurt that Kat's rapidly increasing mechanical proficiency has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

Qeno cracks jokes about having to share joint custody of Katsulas whenever they're planetside on Erysthes. Kat just gives her a gap-toothed grin as he leaves for Zovae's shop and says, "You should come too sometime. Zovae likes pazaak. She gave me my own deck to start with. The three of us could play each other in turns."

To Kat's absolute delight, a few minutes later he spots Qeno walking down the path towards them to Zovae's garage, lunches for three in one hand and her card deck in the other. She smiles when she sees Kat and Zovae waving at her in welcome. Kat pulls out another chair and clears the table to make room for one more.

Kat has finally found himself a family. It's technically his second one, but this one _matters_.

But like the first one, it doesn't last.

* * *

He is ten when he learns what charred flesh smells like. It smells like Qeno's cooking, with an undertone of ozone and burnt hair. But it's _Zovae_ lying in front of him, her fingers peeling and swollen, her once-green skin now blackened and split like a charred roast left too long in the oven. Kat looks at the boiled mess that was Zovae's kind, crinkled, warm face, and suddenly he's bent over in the nearest corner of the shop, heaving out the contents of his stomach between sobs until there's nothing left but acid and foam and salt from tears dripping into the corners of his mouth.

He is shaking. He is hollow and cold. The inside of his head feels emptied out and stuffed with rotting cotton. Kat can hear voices somewhere outside—the rest of the crew scouting out the damage and checking for survivors or, more likely, for lingering enemies.

Enemies. Murderers.

 _Pirates_.

Suddenly Kat knows them for who and what they are. More importantly, he knows _where_ they are. He can sense them, smouldering like hot coals in his brain. It doesn't occur to Kat to wonder how he knows these things. 'How' doesn't matter. All that matters now is revenge. They killed Zovae. They burned her alive.

Kat will make them hurt so much worse.

As he sprints into the jungle, someone shouts his name. Kat barely notices over the roar of blood in his ears and the rage crackling through his sternum. It will be months before he can look back and realize that the person calling after him had been Qeno.

It will be _years_ before Kat can look back and realize how damned lucky he'd been to have survived what came next. He finds power crackling at his fingertips and he takes it _all_. He is already lost; it's easy to lose himself further, to let go entirely for the sake of power and vengeance. He's not just a boy any longer—he is a _conduit_.

He bursts into the clearing where the pirates are loading the last of their stolen cargo. The nearest of the crew haven't even noticed him yet when the first wave of pure Force slams into them, flinging five of their number into the air. Three die with splintered bones and ruptured organs as they smash against their ship's hull. The other two are caught in a large speeder's engine exhaust burn. Another one (lucky enough not to have been in the initial blast's path) rushes Katsulas with a knife, and he _screams_ at her; the raw power that rips from Kat's throat leaves his own mouth full of blood, but leaves the pirate sprawled on her back and clawing blindly at her face as she hemorrhages from her nose, eyes, and ears.

Katsulas leaves her on the ground and advances on the four remaining pirates. They have their blasters and rifles in their hands now, taking aim at him from behind sturdy cover.

It is only by miraculous fortune or the will of the Force possessing him that he isn't killed right then. Katsulas is ten years old when he channels the Force into lightning for the first time, right at the pirate Captain's face. The Captain screams, and the lightning field expands to engulf his three remaining mates.

It takes a while for them to die.

The roar of engines—too loud to be a land speeder, too distant to be the pirate ship right in front of him—finally snaps Katsulas back to his senses. He blinks the white-purple striations from his vision and looks up in time to see the craft that has been his home for the past five years rocket upwards through the atmosphere. It takes him until the ship is gone from view to realize what's just happened.

They've abandoned him. They've left him behind.

No amount of screaming into the sky or at his wrist comm (fried by undamped, uncontrolled force lightning) brings them back. Prayers and apologies are met with silence. He thinks that maybe it's because he abandoned his first family, and he's finally paying for that. Or maybe it's because he isn't really sorry at all for murdering the pirates.

The prayers do bring someone eventually. That's what Katsulas thinks, anyway, when he hears the soft crunch of footsteps approaching and looks up to see a tall, dark-skinned woman clad in brown and tan robes. Sunlight glints off of a metallic cylinder attached to the woman's belt, just visible behind the hem of her robe. Her voice is soft when she asks, "Are you alright, little one?"

Katsulas does not fear the woman, even though she's armed and a stranger. Something about her presence soothes Kat's panic and anguish. He shakes his head in answer.

The woman looks around, brown eyes falling on the corpses that lay around the ten year old boy before settling back on the boy himself. Her gaze drops from Kat's face to his arms. The tattered, blackened remains of his sleeves do nothing to hide the vivid, vertical streaks of angry blisters swelling his forearms and hands. But there is no judgement in the woman's eyes when she looks back up into Kat's face. "What happened?" she asks, still in the same gentle voice.

Katsulas thinks that the woman already knows what happened. He answers anyway. "I killed them."

If the woman is surprised, she doesn't show it. She simply nods and asks: "Why did you kill them?"

Kat's throat tightens. He swallows and clenches his fists. Fresh fire lances through his charred fingers. Lightning has used his blood as a conduit, and it will leave scars that will never heal. "They killed Zovae," he croaks out, "and everyone else."

The woman nods again, more slowly this time. Kat cannot tell what she's thinking. There's no shock, no anger, no revulsion. She is simply...calm. "What is your name?"

"Kat," Kat replies. He hesitates, and then adds, "Katsulas Lews." It's not his real last name; it's Qeno's. He says it out of a desperate hope that by taking the name, he will be linked to Qeno and the rest of the crew and will be able to find his way back to them. He half expects the woman's dark face to show recognition and for her to say ' _oh, let's get you back to your family'_.

But of course no such thing happens. Instead, the woman crouches down before Kat and says: "I am a Jedi. Let me take you to our Temple. You'll be safe there."

It feels _right_ , and Katsulas is suddenly desperate to be anywhere else but here. So he goes with the woman, who indeed turns out to be a Jedi Master from Tython. She even belongs to the _High Council_. Kat isn't sure what that means, but it sounds very important. She assures Kat that everything will be better from now on.

Kat wants to believe her. He wants to erase his past and forget everything that happened on Erysthes. He wants this new beginning that the Jedi have promised him. More than anything else, though, he wants to wake up and find that all of this has just been a terrible nightmare.

It isn't, and the real nightmares find him even in the peace and safety of the Temple creche.

* * *

He is fourteen when Master Emifel offers to take him on as a padawan. Even though the nightmares have diminished by now and Kat has learned to calm his mind with the Force, he still keeps mostly to himself. He has not formed close friendships with any of the other children. Kat is too shy, too hesitant, and he covers the perceived weaknesses up with a defensive, prickly attitude that only serves to isolate him further.

Kat combats his increasing loneliness by dividing his time equally between the training yards, the archives, and the shipyard, and it is the last that finally catches Master Emifel's attention. Fourteen-year-olds with Katsulas's level of mechanical aptitude are uncommon even amongst the Jedi.

"We will be away from the Temple often," Master Emifel warns him. "Most of my missions are in the Outer Rim, though I expect we'll stay within the Core Worlds for your first field mission at least."

Katsulas is delighted, and says ' _yes!'_ with a smile.

* * *

He is fifteen, and he has fallen in love (or what he thinks is probably love) for the first time. It is terrifying for many reasons, only the _least_ of which are the Jedi teachings that expressedly _forbid_ forming attachments, particularly romantic ones. He doesn't want to be sent away. He can't bear the thought of being cast out for breaking the Code. It's not a far stretch to imagine; he has been an excellent padawan so far, but he's not a particularly easy person to like. Abrasiveness is in his nature. He has many allies, but few friends.

But that isn't what terrifies him the most.

Worse is the fact that he's fallen for another boy.

He's seen no other examples of this in holovids or datapads. No one mentions other instances of same-sex attraction. No one even seems to consider the possibility, to the point where Kat is convinced that it's _aberrant_ , that there's something _wrong_ with him. He is terrified, and he's never felt loneliness so _keenly_ before. He can't even go to his Master for advice with this.

(He thinks maybe this boy is an isolated incident until he meets his combat instructor, Master Reynard, who is stern, patient, kind, and incredibly handsome. Temple rumor has it that Reynard used to be a Sith, but changed sides during the Sacking of Coruscant. He is much too old for Katsulas, but that's why no one notices Kat's little teenage infatuation. It serves merely as the confirmation of a pattern.)

Kat never says a word to anyone. He avoids the other boy. Their budding friendship withers before it has a chance to even take root. No one suspects anything.

But the bitterness that festers in his heart only grows from then on.

* * *

He is twenty when he earns his knighthood. Master Emifel glows with warm pride as he gives Katsulas a new pair of crystals. "I knew these were meant for you the instant I saw them," Master Emifel says, watching with a smile as Kat curls his fingers around the two dark purple crystals in his palm. "A bit unconventional, but then...so are you."

"Thank you," Katsulas says. The words don't feel sufficient, but whatever shows on his face clearly is. Kat's throat tightens, and for a little while he doesn't feel anything but swells of pride and joy and a sense of belonging within the Order.

Later, he brings a knife to the thin braid that hangs in front of his right ear, and hesitates. He is no longer a padawan. He is a Jedi Knight of the Galactic Republic. He has no use for the braid any longer.

 _Except that isn't true_ , he realizes. _I may not be a padawan, but I will never stop learning. I can't afford to be overconfident. I can't forget that no matter how much I think I know, I'll never know everything._

And if he's being entirely honest with himself (as a true Jedi Knight _should_ ), Katsulas also likes the way it looks.

He keeps the braid.

* * *

He is twenty-two when he finds an alternate, older version of the Jedi Code buried deep in the Archives. He reads it over and over, grey eyes wide with shock. He feels as though Tython has tipped on its axis, as though visible matter and dark matter have abruptly switched and turned the universe inside-out.

Emotion, _yet_ peace.

Passion, _yet_ serenity.

Chaos, _yet_ harmony.

As though each can exist in balance with the other.

Balance.

At first, Katsulas feels a sense of overwhelming relief. He has actual, written rules that perfectly sum up all of his feelings about the Jedi teachings and the true nature of balance. He has never been able to shut away his emotions. He _aches_ when he tries to deny that his passions and desires exist, even when he doesn't (can't) act on them. When he tries to suppress his feelings, he ends up bottling them like a pressure cooker.

He still has nightmares of lightning and a pirate captain's screams.

Katsulas feels anger next: deep, roiling _outrage_ tight and hot in his chest. He doesn't understand why the Jedi Council would change the Code. The version they teach now isn't 'clearer'. It isn't a more 'straightforward interpretation'. It's a damaging _lie_.

It feels like a betrayal.

Kat adopts the older version of the Code, and to the Sith Hells with what the Council might think.

* * *

Katsulas is twenty-six and he has killed the Sith Emperor, watched the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order be corrupted from within by fanatics who want the right thing for all the wrong reasons and think that wholescale slaughter is the only way to get there, and he has lost count of his mental and physical scars. He is angry. He is tired. He still wakes up screaming from his nightmares next to a lover he feels ashamed to have. He feels far older than he has any right to.

He is done.

After Theron Shan goes underground, Katsulas taps all of the BBA payments he's hoarded in secret over the past four years. He buys his own ship on Tatooine—one untouched by the Republic—and modifies it to the point where it's nearly unrecognizable. He names it _The Prodigal Starfish II_. He'll miss his old ship, but he can't risk her being recognized or traced.

Then he sends a delayed letter to the Jedi Council. He tells them (almost) everything he's wanted to say but never dared to over the past ten years. He ends it by telling them precisely how well they can fuck themselves with their own lightsabers (" _except_ oh _, that would be against the_ Code _wouldn't it?"_ ).

Katsulas disappears and waits to hear from Theron Shan or Lana Beniko. He knows neither of them would approve of his leaving the Order (or, at the very least, his _timing_ ), but it's the right thing to do. He has traded the privileges afforded him as a Jedi of the Galactic Republic for a chance to actually help people, and to put down murderers like the pirates who had slaughtered Zovae and her entire settlement. He trades his polished, decorated cage for a little more freedom. It's a rougher life. A harsher and more dangerous life.

But he is finally on the right path.


End file.
